Fernández-Chapou, Maria del Carmen

"I specialized in Journalism because I believe in the fundamental right to freedom of speech as the base of democracy, peace, and liberty." María del Carmen Fernández Chapou found in Journalism an enthralling and powerful profession that opens the doors to knowledge and a better understanding of the world. Due to the need to build bridges between professional work and higher education, she has been a teacher for over 20 years. She enjoys having the possibility to help change the world from two different sides: media and education. She constantly reflects on the challenges communication faces in the 21st century. Therefore, she considers a basic need to recover ethical sensitivity and to take advantage of the tools within reach in order to freely and responsibly practice the profession, which requires courage against the adversities of the national context. Fernández Chapou has unraveled, for instance, the characteristics of the American New Journalism from the 60s. At the time, in order to inform about an event, journalist practice made use of tools from literary fiction, which disrupted the concept of objectivity and professional ethics of the press. In this way, the winner of the National Award of Journalism, "Faces of discrimination", 2011, and Rómulo Garza Research Award 2013 has also gone through the influence and viability of this New Journalism and storytelling in the current news endeavor of Hispanic American countries.